Nick Hughes: "Non-Ideal Epistemic Rationality"

Nick Hughes, University of Gothenburg: "Non-Ideal Epistemic Rationality"

Abstract
Many theories of epistemic rationality make no special dispensations for cognitive limitations. As a result, they often make demands that only cognitively ideal agents could satisfy. But none of us is, or ever will be, cognitively ideal. This gives rise to a question: given that we can’t think like cognitively ideal agents, how should we think? In this talk, I’ll sketch the outlines of a reliabilist theory of non-ideal epistemic rationality, which attempts to answer this question, and argue that, if it is on the right track, the recently popular idea that the standards of non-ideal epistemic rationality are fixed by social conventions cannot be right.